EIA Kids Page - Waste to Landfill

This is a great site for learning how landfills work. It is geared toward kids but if you are an adult...don't let that stop you. It's good for you too.

A Kids Page - Waste to Landfill

Do plastic bags really take 500 years to break down in a landfill? - By Juliet Lapidos - Slate Magazine

Please enjoy this article while I take a slight hiatus from my own posts.

Do plastic bags really take 500 years to break down in a landfill? - By Juliet Lapidos - Slate Magazine

Fake Plastic Fish: Plastic is made from oil. You knew that, right?

I have no official post today but the report Fake Plastic Fish has is so compelling I simply want to share the link. If you have a spare fifteen minutes right now pop on over to her blog and take a look. Be sure to watch the video.

Fake Plastic Fish: Plastic is made from oil. You knew that, right?

Move it!

I woke up early this morning so I have had a bit of a chance to work on a few things. One of them being this blog. I have moved some of the links to a new heading called "Blog Honor Roll" . These are, in my opinion, some of the better blogs out there regarding sustainability. If you only have a chance to look at one right now I highly recommend you peruse "Fake Plastic Fish". Plastic is something I have begun to hate. Not just because we live in such a plastic society, I have seen the damage it does to wildlife and the eyesore it leaves on our roads.

About a month ago I went to the Oregon coast to do some hiking on the Oregon Coastal Trail. The trailhead was not properly marked on the highway and I never found it. I ended up walking 22 miles on the highway. It wasn't the nature experience I had anticipated. By the way I should mention that I did take the bus to the trail. Anyhow, having walked 22 miles of public highway it was quite alarming the amount of crap that lay all over the shoulder of the road. And it wasn't just on the shoulder. It was even blown into the trees and shrubs. Quite ugly. For a visual example of what plastic bags are doing to our environment AND OUR WILDLIFE visit the Photo Gallery at Reusable Bags. com Here is a direct link to the gallery (CLICK HERE)

Another thing that hit me recently, since I am packing, is that I have a lot of crap. Well, I am weeding it out and getting rid of a bunch of stuff. Another thing I am finding too is that I have a huge volume of waste paper that I am hauling to the recycle bins. I think this is going to be one of my projects for self. To reduce my paper consumption drastically. I really haven't paid attention to where this stuff comes from.

Well, that is about all the time I have today to write. Have a great day all.

Talking Trash

In the morning you stumble out of bed, grab a banana off the table, spill a little cereal in the bowl, slice the banana into the cereal and then pour a little milk over the top. The banana peel gets dumped into the trash can, the empty cereal box and inside bag goes there too. As luck would have it the milk carton is also empty so you dump that in the trash as well. Time for the morning paper as you grab your bowl, wander to the table and, eyes not quite open, sit down.

Leaning back slightly you read the morning headline--"Sending trash across the state may be pricey". Oooo...sounds expensive. You read on scanning through the text. Ten million dollars EVERY YEAR--570,000 tons of garbage--burial in the desert, 137 miles away--70 diesel belching trucks every day--trucks traveling 274 miles round trip just to haul garbage. Could this really be?

Garbage, it seems, is better off in a dry climate. I assume it decays better. But 570,000 tons? That is 1,140,000,000 pounds of garbage yearly. Oh wait, let me make that easier. That is ONE BILLION, ONE-HUNDRED-FORTY MILLION pounds of garbage yearly or three-million-one hundred twenty-three thousand-two-hundred and eighty-seven pounds of garbage EVERY DAY. Holy Toledo, that's a lot of weight!

It all starts with us...err I mean me. We, I mean I, put the stuff in the can and dump it without a single thought. Well, actually I do give it a though now after reading "Garbage Land; On the Secret Trail of Trash" but most don't. Just drop it in the can...not my problem now. Every item we, I mean I, drop in the trash can uses petroleum. Not just in the manufacture but also in the disposal. Imagine if this option were not available and I had to start burying all the stuff I throw away in my backyard. For sure I might just get a little embarrassed. Not to mention the complaints from the neighbors. Not a good option.

We, as a society, have learned to avoid embarrassment by paying someone to take our trash away. It's a lucrative business for the trash company. we pay them millions of dollars every year to take our trash out and hide it in the desert. This way we don't even have to think about it. It is just nice little plastic bundles given up for burial without last rites or eulogy and then simply forgotten.

We ourselves can go from dust to dust but much of our garbage cannot. It goes from plastic to plastic and stays that way for centuries, possibly forever. Even paper, when layered and not exposed to the air, lasts for hundreds,or possibly thousands, of years. If this world lasts long enough we will have left enough trash behind to keep an archaeology team busy and snickering at our piggish folly for a very long time. Ummm..the current system is not sustainable so eventually we will have to figure out a different way. But don't worry that will probably be after we have all have been disposed of ourselves...hopefully with a little more reverence than the trash we left behind.

So what should we do with our trash? Well, the first thing to do is think about trash before it becomes trash. Don't buy as much. Refuse to buy things in containers that cannot be reused or recycled. AVOID PLASTIC. Buy bulk as much as possible. If your store does not have a bulk aisle then switch stores and tell the manager why you left. If there are no bulk stores in your neighborhood then start a co-op. Use reusable bags and containers rather than plastic bags as often as you can. Recycle everything you can...everything! About 80% of what we currently use in our household is recyclable and we sort and haul it away to the proper bins. Be conscious of reducing, reusing and recycling. Start a compost or worm bin. Quit buying so much stuff. I know, I know...its hard to do in our consumerist society.

I won't go into the details about my own trash here because I have covered that in previous blogs but I know I still have a long way to go. My goal is to be as close to zero garbage as possible. I have failed that goal in many regards simply because I haven't been conscious. If I keep my mind on garbage and put pressure on the manufacturers to think this way too I can personally help to make garbage less of an issue, financially and otherwise. I must say the numbers I quoted above came from my hometown paper and shocked me a bit. It actually left me feeling a little soiled because I know I am part of the problem. I even used to own a bunch of stock in Waste Management and rooted for all those tossing their trash because it made the company more profitable. Now I am working toward being a part of the solution by Reducing what I buy, Reusing what I can, and Recycling what I can't. It's a simple statement but agreeably it is very difficult to fully implement. But it makes you feel good when you deposit very little trash in the can or dumpster. Try it...you'll like it.

Mail Woes and Cloth Bags

MAIL WOES

Yesterday and today I received one pound three ounces of junk mail that went directly from my mailbox to the recycle bin. Yikes! One of the pieces actually came in a box with a pen for me to sign a petition. It may have been a good cause but I didn't really look at it. I just disassembled it, took out the pen and threw the rest in the recycle bin. I have begun a daily log of the weight of my junk mail and I will post it here weekly at least. I have called a few of the places that send me mail and have found that if you plan to do this on a regular basis be prepared to be put on hold a lot or be transferred to voice mail. Some will even act miffed that you are taking up their time. But stopping the flood of junk mail is worth the hassle.

OK, before I sound too holier than thou I do have to confess my guilt. I used to own a company that produced co-op ad pieces that went out through bulk mail to thousands of homes and consumed tons of paper and gallons of ink and probably irritated a few people in the process as well. But I was asleep then, I am awake now and I have flogged myself sufficiently to be free of that sin. Now I even print things on my computer to .pdf' files as much as I can and use paper only when absolutely necessary. Saves me a bunch on toner too. And we all know how much they charge for toner.

One thing I did recently is to pay a buck to the Direct Marketing Association for their Preferred Mail Service. Basically what this does is tell them I am sick of junk mail and would gladly pay a buck to get rid of it. Sort of like a spam filter for your snail mail. It takes a few months for the system to kick in and if it works I should see 75% less poundage coming my way. I also went to OptOut Prescreen.com and opted out of all of the "You are pre-approved for a Uranium credit card with a One-Million Dollar Limit" junk mail I get. This one is free to sign up for and lasts for five years unless you mail in a signature on a separate form and then it is permanent. If my efforts are successful I should see a big drop in my junk mail in the next six months. OK, now onto another topic.

CLOTH BAGS

Grocery shopping for me lately has brought on a large bit of guilt too. Since I eat a plant based diet that means I shop mostly in the produce and bulk sections. And what does that mean? It means that I come home from the market with dozens of plastic bags each time I go. I'm not talking about the "paper or plastic" bags at the checkout counter. I mean the flimsy ones you spend five minutes trying to open so you can dump a head of lettuce in. However I have finally discovered an answer. They are called Eco Bags, are made of cloth, have a string tie and are reusable. I found them at ReusableBags.com. I ordered ten of them at $2.25 a piece with about five bucks shipping today and they should be here sometime next week. Once I have a chance to use them I'll post my experiences here. Since I already use reusable bags to bring my groceries home having these should eliminate the plastic all together. Oh, and I should mention when you are at the site don't leave without reading the "Fast Facts" section and looking at the "Photo Gallery". Plastic bags are not just unsightly and a waste of resources, they also kill an enormous amount of wildlife.